Live review: Laneway Festival 2014

Joe Nunweek, Sam Wicks, Nick Atkinson, Lena Hesselgrave and Marcus Stickley will keep you updated throughout the day from St Jerome's Laneway Festival in Auckland.

12am - JAMIE XX, CATPOWER, LITERAL F@#& AND THE PRESETS

Well, that was weird. I had a great time at Jamie XX, who put on a completely straight but super-competent DJ set. No bells and whistles, just the DNA of what he's been doing with his band and solo laid out for the world to see. Even his “hit”, 2011's Far Nearer swanned into focus without feeling imposed or like a box-ticking exercise. Elsewhere, lots of sparse and propulsive 70s disco, a little dancehall, a little juke, even a little blurry rototommed & robotripped chillwave without so much as a sneer. 

Then you had three options come 9.30pm, and I tried to give them all a shot. If you'd been to Cat Power the last couple of times she was in town, you would have seen a sort of slick travelling soul revue thing where she's surrounded by session musicians and there's barely a bum note - they've tended to match tepidly enjoyable albums rather than the curdling solitude of her earlier work. This was much more in the vein of her 2005 performance at the Maidment Theatre (right down to only being announced a couple of weeks earlier) - just her, her guitar a beat-up piano, and crippling anxiety.

Thing is, the reverent hush of the Maidment was replaced by the ambient roar of festival noise, and Chan Marshall couldn't catch a break. She's fine vocally and even instrumentally - but there’s the same issue anxiety she's fought with for years. A single mic fade or flubbed note and she comes right out of the moment, flinching like a leaf at people who mean well cheering her on. It's really hard to see.

I escape into the comfort of the Thunderdome, which you can finally get into, to see the last of Literal F@#&, Claire Duncan and Veronica Crockford-Pound's inscrutable Michael Jackson tribute. It's the best. I come in for the most uncanny ‘90s Jacko impersonator lip-syncing to his late-period hits, wooing and rejecting a salsa dancer, moonwalking like a pro. Claire and Veronica watch in dark sunglasses like ominous svengalis. It feels like Smokefree Stage Challenge, grown up and absolutely tripping balls. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen at a festival, which is a reminder that festivals don't get this weird often enough.

Finally, I catch the last 10 minutes of The Presets. It's blah. They're an Australian electro duo that had their heyday circa 2005/2006, and it shows. It's a bit of an odd, desultory end to a festival that doesn't really represent the day itself.

- Joe Nunweek

11.10pm - CHVRCHES, CAT POWER AND THE PRESETS

Who to watch as the closing act at Laneways was always going to be a tough choice. Lorde would have been perfect, but she had a couple Grammys to collect. James Blake also decided he needed to be at the awards, but didn’t find the same success.

So the choices were Cat Power, playing solo after ditching her band for budgetary reasons, Aussie dancefloor shakers The Presets, or, if neither of them fit the bill, cruising home after Chvrches.

A few people chose to leave even before Chvrches finished, after a mid-set technical failure momentarily disrupted the Scottish trio’s synth pop anthems. If you stuck around it was worth the patience for Mother We Share and the heartening applause that came after.

So where to next?

First pick – Cat Power. Unfortunately, she could barely be heard on the edge of the lawn in front of the stage. If you were standing front and centre it might have been a great performance, not so much on the periphery.

But it wasn’t quite time to go home. While I’ll never been a fan of The Presets, there’s a time and place where they own the environment – namely late at a big festival when everyone is ready to PARRTTAY! There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people dancing a boozey boogie. It was kind of infectious, even if you were stone cold sober and lugging around two laptops and an audio recorder.

The Presets don’t write music that’s really thought provoking. To me, it’s mostly big house-y or trance-y beats with a simple, catchy phrase shouted over the top – something the punters can sing along to as they’re pogoing with their fists in the air.

And that’s how Laneway V went out.

Had Lorde played, it would have been epic. As it was, it was a damn fine – as usual.

- Marcus Stickley 

9pm - HAIM

Alana Haim rakes her Gibson SG. It’s the same guitar Angus Young plays, the school-uniform wearing lead player from ACDC. Flanked by her two Californian sisters Este and Danielle, Alana wails and chugs on her axe with supreme technique.

Two songs into their set Haim rip into a tempo-curling blues number with Danielle singing. In her leather jacket, black jeans and long, flailing brown hair, Alana nails the stops with ruthless precision. The sun goes down, the lights come on and she throttles the neck of her SG, coaxing a metallic whine from its searing frets as the band wait poised for her cue. Boom! the speed of the song doubles and they soar off into another ripping crescendo.

As the set progresses they play all the hits from their debut Days Are Gone. These three sisters are the tightest, most musically ambitious act of the day. Bass player Este lets the audience know she’s “taking off her jacket so she can shake her ass” before the band launch into another pick-tastic beat-breaking pop epic. They finish with an all-in percussion bash-a-thon that goes tribal and then it’s over. Forty-five minutes up in smoke and flames kindled from the strings of Aalana Haim’s red-hot guitar playing.

- Nick Atkinson

8.20pm - SAVAGES

HAIM’s indie pop rock is pumping around Silo Park right now, but half-an-hour earlier Savages, all poise and power, had the crowd captivated.

The band’s guitarist Gemma Thompson earlier told The Wireless team about the choreographed dances they’ve been developing to try and make every individual gig its own unique experience. You could see all that practice in their performance today. Singer Jehnny Beth’s movements were perfectly timed to precision queues in the songs.

It was the rhythm section, bassist Ayse Hassan and drummer Fay Milton, that really blew we away. They create the thunder to Beth and Thompson’s lightning. It’s a sight to behold, especially during songs with the intensity of Husbands.

Anyone who might have been wandering out the gates early would have been convinced to stay for at least a few more songs.

By the way, if you’ve been wondering about the lack of updates over the past couple hours, we’ve had some major technical difficulties that stopped us publishing. We’re up and running again, and there are a few more bands to go.

- Marcus Stickley

8.10pm – HANGING AT CACTUS CAT

Writing this ensconced at the Cactus Cat stage. Killing time listening to Todd Terje on the PA cos if I move from here I won't be able to see Jamie XX. It's Defcon 1 this side of the silo.

I tried to see Jacinda Ardern DJ before but the queues for the Thunderdome put a stop to that. There's a factual error for me to correct before - I assumed Laners would have moved this stage cos it was such a crowd issue last time, but I guess it's novel if you tough it out and get in. Looking around the clientele today it's not inconceivable Young Nationals have packed it out as an act of sabotage. 

I finally did things like get food and drink, and the queues are pretty easy. Nothing world shaping to report, but apart from the bedlam on the third stage it never feels like the place has been oversold. 

Danny Brown, of course, was completely wild and a consummate showman. Should have absolutely been on the main stage. Simple setup rap shows like this need a dude with serious charisma and energy, and he had it. However, it's his first time in NZ and so he made the mistake of crowd interaction. Lots of leaving lines for the audience to finish, etc. it's a guarantee that for everyone mumbling “Bum after bum after bum” there's someone that knows I Will verbatim but was too shy to belt it out. We're a meek bunch, but he coaxed a lot more out of us by the end. Best thing I saw today, but watch this space

- Joe Nunweek

6.30pm – PARQUET COURTS

At Parquet Courts, my friend turns around remarks “These guys are a really good guitar band, mainly because there aren’t any guitar bands anymore”. It’s kinda true though – I’d give it to these guys, Kurt Vile and Real Estate right now.

Last year’s Light Up Gold has lots of highlights and I think I have a lot of love in my heart for the moments where they clear the ground and become good like their influences rather than because of their influences. I guess the only bummer is that I feel that these highlights are all grist to a 45-minute mill. The foursome treat it like a land speed record to get through the album and companion EP without missing a beat.

When I talked to them earlier in the day, they’d mentioned they’re not fans of banter. Not kidding – there’s about five words uttered between songs, and though this matches the gapless playback of the records themselves it also means that some of the numbers just seem like straight-up ragers. I want to turn to people around me and explain that Careers In Combat and Borrowed Time are economical little masterpieces that say a lot with a little and that this is increasingly uncommon in indie rock, but this is probably me being a stickler about music that had its heyday 20 years ago. The energy is all there though, and “Stoned And Starving” remains a colossal jam, with a well-deserved guitar duel as its live appendix.

- Joe Nunweek

5.37pm - SAVAGES INTERVIEW

I spoke to Gemma Thompson about an hour or so ahead of Savages’ set. I wasn’t sure what to expect.  A lot has been made of the band being uncompromising and confrontational, but I think a fair bit of journo’s fiat has projected the sound of last year’s Silence Yourself onto a bunch of considered interviews from four musicians who spent a long time planning their group before they executed it.

The effort shows. Thompson talks to me about the videos and choreographed dances they’ve been developing to try and make every individual gig its own unique experience – but there’s also the strain of “being a festival act”, playing songs to a horde of people taking half-arsed videos of the thing. Recently in Singapore, they had to censor themselves.

It’s an interesting time for the group – how do you avoid overexposure when you’ve put so much in the curation of an image that resists it? Gemma takes the long view: “I think all we’re dedicated to is to keep improving at what we do and at our instruments. We were all proud of the album, but I also don’t feel like I could stop there and be happy if we ended the group tomorrow.”

With tracks like Hit Me and She Will I often feel like the band has more in common with the sexual politics battlefield of hip-hop than the safe pantomime of longing, sweet nothings, and euphemistic wails of rock music. But Gemma personally and openly admits to not being that invested in rap. It sort of serves to underline the fact that Savages are kind of anachronistic – resisting their own press (and the tyranny of influence that’s come with it – Joy Division, Siouxie Public Image, we get it) but not necessarily keyed in to the here and now. It left me interested to see where they go next.

- Joe Nunweek

4.54pm - JAGWAR MA INTERVIEW

Just spoke to Gabriel, Jono and Jack out of Jagwar Ma. Really interesting dudes, who I learn had interacted on and off with each other for three years or so before ever actually inhabiting the same stage.

“We had this rotating project, because it was much easier to do something where you didn’t have those preconditions that come with a certain band. It turned out pretty well, we just gelled on stage.”

It’s true, the band have a set of complimentary skills – Gabriel the one who’s most likely to answer the questions straight away and not stop, Jono the cerebral electronics and sound guy who can recite the MIDI software and patches they use as everyone - including me - looks oblivious, Jack the rock-solid bass and the unexpected jester of the three.

We talk about the challenges of being a small band (Gabriel has a tourniqueted knee, Jono was bedridden for months after the completion of Howlin’ – the stresses just pass back and forth) and the Year Zero for Australian music that was The Avalanches (even if I’m accused of being a “journalistic Pol Pot” for coining the phrase).

- Joe Nunweek

4.10pm - UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA

Fresh from a tour of Asia band-leader Ruban Neilson can’t decide if his music is decadent or subversive. The concert dates in China left Neilson reconsidering what his music means and it’s an ongoing process.

This afternoon at Laneway the former Mint Chick, who’s been on the road almost constantly since the release of the bedroom-recorded self-titled debut, is freshly shorn and sporting a red leather choker adorned with small white roses. That band play many of the highlights from last year’s brilliant second album II with drummer Riley Geare firmly established as the anchor of the nimble trio completed by Neilson’s right hand man and co-producer Jake Portrait.

On stage it looks as though the band are set up for a recording session, with Geare on one side and Portrait on the other with Neilson in the centre. All of the amps face inwards, towards the musicians, and songs like Monkey and The Sun are stretched and bent into new shapes thanks to extended guitar solos which showcase Neilson’s unusual style, the guitar slung high, over only one shoulder. He also eschews a pick favouring the control of his finger-nails and tips.

The extended guitar breaks sound almost old-fashioned next to the beats and breaks of Earl Sweatshirt who storm on-stage afterwards, but Neilson’s fiercely hot technique and spare, catchy tunes keep a crowd familiar with the repertoire nodding along. So Good At Being In Trouble may be one of the indie hits of 2013, but it doesn’t quite muster a sing-along, it’s possibly too early in the day for this handsome crowd.

- Nick Atkinson

For a taste of UMO in a more intimate venue, here's the band playing Auckland's King's Arms in July last year: 

3.30pm - PARQUET COURTS INTERVIEW

Just chatted to Andrew and Austin out of Parquet Courts. The Texas-educated duo are the longest-standing partnership behind the NYC foursome, and they rightly strike back when I ask if they ever regret the move: “Everyone’s been coming to New York since forever. The Dutch colonised it, there were waves of immigration ever since. It’s not even a rite of passage or anything romantic like that. It’s just what you do.”

We chat a little about the value of economy in music. “Our songs will either go for 90 seconds, or go for 12 minutes and be super-repetitive”, as well as the band’s knack to write political songs without ever approaching a capital-p Political band state of sloganeering (see also: Minutemen’s Maybe Partying Will Help and Pavement’s Grounded). “I think when you read certain books, like On The Road, it’ clearly not about politics but politics weaves its way in there in a way that’s not necessarily about overt gestures and statements.”

In their music, the lyrics are front-and-centre and have people looking for interpretations – but they’re unwilling to go into explaining them all (and fair enough). Every so often, their eyes drift to the side of the room. They’re fascinated by our “crying power outlets”, a electronic twist of fate unique to Australia and NZ.

Unrelated update: Just looked up from my phone because someone was playing Danny Brown, and was sort of surprised but not really to find it was Danny Brown himself. And it was awesome.

- Joe Nunweek

3.10pm - JAGWAR MA AND DAUGHTER

Jagwar Ma are even louder once you're front and centre - they've lamented the fact that they're always celebrated as Stone Roses or Happy Mondays revivalists, but when you wear knitted beanies and floppy hats on stage and play dance music and ... well, what do you expect! No Bez-like figure on the maracas but I keep expecting them to unequivocally bellow “New Zealand! You are a dance fookin' nation!” before launching into an acid house rave up.

Despite all of the pointers towards Madchester, they actually remind me a lot of the occasional heavy psych band I've caught, like the late great Comets On Fire. Lots of analogue equipment - if there wasn't an Echoplex on stage, it sure sounded like it half the time. The last couple of numbers point to a more regional influence - the Avalanches and their ecstatic sample-built sets. It's good and if you missed it, here's an interview the band did with Music 101:

Daughter are also good, but we've heard a lot of XX-derived bands in the past couple of years and the sparse guitar and drum track + boy/girl duo isn't exactly throwing anyone for a loop anymore. They play to their strengths after a couple of more derivative openers, which is that they're essentially an old fashioned post-rock band (violin bows on guitar strings, rolling toms, an oncoming storm) in hip 2014 clothing. It gels by the end - perhaps the sound gets a bit diabolical for the maelstrom on stage, but an original mess beats an overfamiliar masterpiece any day.

- Joe Nunweek

2pm – THE OPENERS

It’s all happening. Laneway V finds Silo Park settling into a comfortable vibe of luxury yachts, towering cement and the smell of spilt Becks. I’ll be keen to see the Thunderdome (the attempt to make one of the silos themselves the defacto dance tent a couple of years ago was a failure, but a noble one), but the other stages are as you’d expect. The fact that the organisers can’t secure this place for next year leaves me apprehensive, but that’s a wider question about public space in Auckland, rather than a Laneways issue.

The opening hour has been a mixed bag. Melbourne affable bro band Vance Joy opens things up with affable bro singer-songwriter music. There’s the second winsome hit namedropping Emmylou Harris I’ve heard in as many years (I’ve gotten so used to a cultural nostalgia for punk and “edge” that I forget some people still invoke “the good old days” in a very trad and cosy way), and it’s a bit too loud for what it is and so it just sounds like a pre-amped acoustic Sunday set and … I dunno, there’s nothing wrong with Melbourne affable bros  Vance Joy playing first at Laneway Auckland bar obvious opportunity cost. I feel like this is a really good place to put Anthonie Tonnon, or Trust Punks – someone who will appreciate the vote of confidence and run with it.

The next Australian transplant, the Jezabels, fare better. Like Kent to Sweden or Mew to Denmark they’re a big, epic band who have done really well in their homeland but made scant ripples anywhere else. I’m charmed by frontperson Hayley Mary’s frank admission that the music will be new to the local audience, and it sort of deflates the awkward tension of someone playing anthemic The National/U2 indie rock in front of you and thinking you know all the words. They make a really full sound for a four piece with one guitar and no bass, and while men have been allowed to cavort around like Bono in a leather jacket and make messianic and strident Music That Matters for a while, it’s refreshing to see a female-fronted band do the same and own it convincingly. Mary is a fine singer, rich and commanding. Though I get leery about some of The Edge-style guitar playing, she makes this more of a Springsteen thing – working-class fight songs playing for keeps and with the odd meter change that makes thing interesting before you nod off.

When I head over to Doprah, I get pretty wrong-footed. Having known nothing off the band beyond hearing the music, I pictured it as a one-person Lontalius/Race Banyon set up. They choose to perform live as an impossibly young six-piece instead, trying to do all of these tightly constructed and atmospheric trip-hop numbers live and succeeding by the end. I wondered whether they’d overshot when I arrived. By the end, I realised that playing Portishead like a big-hearted teenage love letter was their whole thing. Secret weapons: a deceptively good banter as they battle the technical dragons that come with performing on this scale and a simply extraordinary young singer who feels schooled in jazz rather than beholden to it. They’re opening for Lorde this week, and the rep’s preceded them. It’s a nice start, and they become my ragged fave of the day so far. Off to see Jagwar Ma now, who are shaking the building I’m writing from.

- Joe Nunweek

1pm - HERE COME THE CROWDS

Vance Joy hasn’t quite finished the opening set of Laneways and there’s a steady stream through the gates at Silo Park to join the couple thousand people that have made it in since midday.

Most of them have gathered around the Mysterex Stage to hear the Melbourne troubadours. The crowd was warming up, even under Auckland’s overcast skies.

There’s also a steady trickle of punters in jean shorts and five panel caps on their way over to see Doprah on the smaller Cactus Cat Stage, which later on is going to have the likes of Youth Lagoon, Danny Brown, Jamie XX and Cat Power playing.

With another 8000 people to come, this place is going to be packed once the day's in full swing.

- Marcus Stickley

THE NIGHT BEFORE 

Judging from the various pleas on social media it appears that Laneways selling out has taken many people by surprise. My guesstimate that Silo Park can corral about 10,000 people tops was about right, so we can expect total bedlam by about 6pm this evening I guess the only questions are: Will they run out of booze? Will they run out of stone-grilled everything?

My biggest worry is running out of shade, though the weather bodes for a muggy grey day, a little like the first Laneway in Britomart back in 2010.

They should be very proud to get to this point, though. I figured Auckland would struggle to sustain two big music festivals again, particularly in or near the city centre. I guess this means Laneway has cultivated a brand distinction of its own (less obliquely, it’s now got a reputation for being a good time). Especially given that Lorde had to defer to a sideshow, and the inexplicably-popular grey Coldplaystep of James Blake was a no-show. Multiple crises averted.

Unknowns: Will Ella Yelich-O’Connor bank a Grammy or four, and if so how will Laneway mark it in her absence? An Earl cover? Will Savages’ strict “no smartphones - please inhabit the moment” rule - which is not that surprising coming from Van Morrison but sort of insufferable coming from four young people - survive a festival crowd? Will Jacinda Ardern drop Tory hipster favourites (and good band) Vampire Weekend, or will she risk clearing the floor with a Billy Bragg tearjerker? Will Claire Duncan’s coldwave Michael Jackson revue Literal F@#* end the Thunderdome by summoning the man himself from beyond the grave? Will a dad shed a tear to Kurt Vile’s endless summer of riffs, silhouetted in the sunset? And which lucky young Aucklander’s drunken cling-and-rant from the side of the Cactus Cat stage will end up on YouTube for two days and go half-heartedly viral before its inevitable takedown?

And some certainties: Laneway keeps the sets short, it’s incorrigibly hip and The Rock FM won’t be selling any singlets. My ones to see are Danny Brown, Jamie XX, Rackets, Cat Power and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Today should be an embarrassment of riches.

Check back from 1pm for the latest live reports from Radio New Zealand's The Wireless and Music 101 reporters. 

- Joe Nunweek

 

This content is brought to you with funding assistance from New Zealand On Air.